Matt Read, Weblog

Site Back Up

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

Sorry to anyone who tried to visit my on saturday. But my host upgraded their server and my site was down a couple of hours. They also changed the path of my site from /home/ to /home2/ so I had to change a few things. If you see any errors please email me or comment on this post. Thanks.

I have also implemented mod_rewrite permalinks so any current links you have back to my site, may not work properly. Sorry.

Another Little Update

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

I updated the style of this site at bit, agian. I know, it never ends, but it’s fun. You’ll notice the “raised side bar” and the new post format of the blog, like this post. Also I’ve added Photomatt’s Asides hack to give the little linky things.

Well I hope you like it, and again let me know what you think about everything by commenting on this post.

Note: I have not tested evreything fully in MSIE. So if you have MSIE 6, 5.5 or 5.0 let me know of any problems (espescially with 5.5 and 5.0). Also if you have ~~an older version of Mozilla or~~ any Mac browsers, please let me know if everything looks fine. Thank You.

A little Update

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

I added some different backgrounds to each section on this site. Hope you like them and please leave a comment if you do or don’t like them. Also I added the visitor counter script to the tweaks section, enjoy.

The Great Upgrade Begins

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

I am Currently in the process of upgrading WordPress from 1.2 Mingus to the Latest nightly build (06-30-2004). So if you encounter any problems with the site, please be patient.

The reason for the upgrade is that the trackback feature in 1.2 doesn’t work, and so far, in the latest nightly build, it does. So soon you’ll all be able to trackback my posts. If you want to test out WordPress 1.3 alpha click below:

http://www.mattread.com/wordpress/
Login: test
Password: password

Get Your GMail Invite!

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

UPDATE: My final GMail Invite was given away. If I get more I will give them away like this one.

I have an invite to GMail to give away. I will give it to the eight hundred and ninetyth (890th) visitor to my site. Just grab a screen capture of the visitor counter on the bottom of my site and email it to me. Note that it counts only unique visitors, so refreshing WON’T make it go up.

Note: if nobody sends me a screen grab of 890, I’ll use 891, or 892, or 893, …….

webmaster@mattread.com

BloGTK

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

This post was posted with BloGTK blogging client, using the MoveableType API. BloGTK is a blogging client for Linux. It is written in python so you need python installed. go and download it now.

http://blogtk.sf.net

My Home Weather

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

Well, I’m sure you don’t care but I just put the weather in my side bar on the right. It is showing the current weather here in my home town of Ottawa. Currently I’m just showing the tempurature but I’m thinking of including cloud cover, winds, and wind chill. What do you think? Leave me a comment.

New Site Design

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

I just completely finished my new site design tonight. I booted into windows and everything was fine on IE and Mozilla. I have also heard that it looks good on Mac too, but I have not seen it personally. I would like to here any comments you guys have about the new design. And if you find anything wrong please email me.

Links Added

2007-04-06T14:58:24-04:00

I have just added a links section to the site. I will link to your site if you wish, but you must link to my site as well. I will review every request for a link to ensure spam free and valid links. I will put your logo there to if you want as long as its not a huge graphic. So lets make both our site show better on google, submit your link now.

Gmail Gmail Gmail

2007-04-06T14:58:23-04:00

After giving away 32 invites in less than two days, Google seems to think I’m good at it, cause they gave me six more. This time and from now on I will NOT post the gmail invites on this site, but if you email me at webmaster ‘at’ mattread ‘dot’ com, I will send you an invite. I currently have about 24 invites to give away.

Site Changing a Bit

2007-04-06T14:58:23-04:00

You may notice some wonky shit as you browse around my site. That is because I’m doing some minor upgrades to the site, to make a better experience for you and me. So please be patient and understanding as my testing server blew up. Well not blew up, just died.

SafeSurf Rated

2007-04-06T14:58:22-04:00

My site is now rated with the SafeSurf rating system. It’s rated as “Adult Supervision Recommended”. I haven’t been approved by SafeSurf yet, but hopefully I soon will get my license. Have a look at my rating.

SafeSurf is voluntary rating service which uses the PICS specification to rate web pages based on content, using meta tags. I highly recommend you rate your site today.

Testing The Language and Pseudo Elements

2007-04-06T14:58:22-04:00

This post is a test of my new CSS pseudo elements. I have added special quotes for English, Francais and German (only seems to work in Gecko, hmm). I have also added a neat hack to show the cite attribute right after a blockquote, to show the source of that blockquote, as well as language markers for the given lang attribute. Anyway, this post is just to test them out. Note that this will not work in IE, so go get FireFox.

This is a quote in English, using normal quotes and since the main language of this site is english there is no extra language identifier.

Se c’est un quote en Francais, et i’ll y a un marker pour language. Je ne parler pas francais.

Vis is ze quote en German, but I von’t speken ze German, but anyvay, vere is an extra language marker.

This is a test blockquote and has a cite attribute of http://mattread.com/ and a lang attribute of en. You will notice the nice Source thing at the bottom of this blockquote, and the [en] language marker, which is done entirely in CSS. Pretty cool isn’t it?

Now lets test a paragraph in French, with a quote in french and a quote in english. Notice the language marker before this paragraph. Ya ya, I know this isn’t French but like I said earlier, I don’t speak French very well. Again, all CSS.

I have also added a print CSS file, so do a print preview to see the print style of this site. Have fun, and let me know what you think. Have a look at my main language CSS file.

Inspired by James.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day

2007-04-06T14:58:22-04:00

Happy Talk Like Pirate Day. I have added a Pirate filter to filter all posts and make me sound like Pirate. Anyway have fun ye Picaroon. Arrrrr. Walk the plank! Aarrr! Be sure to read some of the posts, as the filter adds in some random Pirate jargon, avast. Can be funny.

Hmmmm, I wonder what other special days we can come up with? How about Talk Like A Geek Day. Got any good ones? Let me now, leave a comment.

UPDATE: It seems as though this filter borked my site, so I have disabled it for ever, me matey. Aaarrr!

How to Link

2007-04-06T14:58:22-04:00

I have a question for everybody. How should I link to people’s site from my site? should I (a) link to them use their site’s name, or (b) link to them using their real name. Personally I’m leaning towards their real name, but I’d like to know what you all think.

Where Has All The Content Gone?

2007-04-06T14:58:21-04:00

I would like to apologise to all of you who came here looking for documentation, plugins, or just a read. It seems that I screwed up when trying to add, what I call, “quick admin links” to posts. It’s just some links that allow you to delete/edit comments and/or posts. Unfortunately I did the following with the “the_content” filter:

ID)) {
    return;
}
]]>

Of course, that meant that all of you who were not logged in to my site, could not see any post nor comment contents, while I could see them just fine. And this brings up a good point. When using filters, remember to return the original content passed to your function, or you’ll end up like me, contentless. ;)

Here’s what I should have done and now have done:

ID)) {
    return $content;
}
]]>

Again, sorry to all who came looking for content. :)

More Smilies 2.0

2007-04-06T14:58:21-04:00

More Smilies 2.0 is out, :!: and now has clickable smilies for the comments form (with a little edit), and clickable smilies for the admin area (no editing required). It even supports the WYSIWYG editor thanks to Owen’s buttonsnap library.

2.0 Also supports Owen’s Role Manager plugin. It adds the new capability, ‘change_smilies’. So if you use Role Manager, you will need to assign the ‘change_smilies’ capability to the various roles, or you won’t be able to change smilies. :)

Oh, and one more important note. It’s only for WordPress 2.0. Do not install it on 1.5 or the sky will fall on your head. And that could hurt.

My Plugins

2007-04-06T14:58:21-04:00

All plugins are back in the Dropbox!!!!

~~All of my plugins will (hopefully) soon be hosted on WP-Plugins.org. As soon as the accounts are created I will fix all downloads. Please stand by.~~

Search Me Baby!

2007-04-06T14:58:21-04:00

I’ve intergrated a brand spanking new search into my site. It allows you to search 3 areas; Blog Posts, Static Pages, and Comments. As well as some other options.

~~The only prob right now is that the pagination does not work correctly~~. But do a search, then click “Advanced Search” and you will see the new options.

I like it, how about you guys? let me know.

Apology

2007-04-06T14:58:21-04:00

To all of those who have left comments on my blog or emailed in the last couple of weeks looking for support, I owe you an apology. Sorry.

I have just been too busy to do anything with this site/blog. But I promise I will try to get caught up with everything over the next couple of days. Again Sorry.

Live long and prosper.